Angelus News | December 31, 2021

ANGELUS 

SAFE WITH THE SISTERS 

On LA’s anxious streets, St. Mother 

Teresa’s missionaries bring life 

December 31, 2021 Vol. 6 No. 26

B • ANGELUS • December 31, 2021

ANGELUS 

December 31, 2021 

Vol. 6 • No. 26 

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ON THE COVER 


Sisters of the Missionaries of Charity with two of the several 

“ladies” living in their convent at St. Emydius in Lynwood. 

On Page 10, Angelus writer Steve Lowery was granted a 

rare insider’s look at the everyday work of the “daughters” of 

Mother Teresa. What he found was a band of fearless sisters 

who never seem to stop working — or smiling — while quietly 

working to save single mothers and their unborn children. 

THIS PAGE 


This year’s annual Simbang Gabi opening Mass 

drew a full house at the Cathedral of Our Lady 

of the Angels on Dec. 15. This year’s theme 

for the Mass was “Gifted to Share the Light of 

Christ” and part of the local Filipino Catholic 

community’s ongoing commemoration of 500 

years of Christianity in the Philippines. 

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Pope Watch.................................................................................................................................... 2 

Archbishop Gomez..................................................................................................................... 3 

World, Nation, and Local News.......................................................................................... 4-6 

In Other Words............................................................................................................................. 7 

Father Rolheiser............................................................................................................................ 8 

Scott Hahn................................................................................................................................... 32 

Events Calendar......................................................................................................................... 33 

16 

18 

CONTENTS 

A Santa Barbara family’s homemade Nativity scene goes to church 

John Allen’s Top 5 Church news headlines of 2021 

Angelus News 

@AngelusNews 

@AngelusNews 

22 

24 

Predicting the impact of Pope Francis’ trip to Cyprus and Greece 

Kathryn Lopez on Dorothy Day’s shot at sainthood 

angelusnews.com 

lacatholics.org 

26 

Grazie Christie finds plenty of enchantment in Disney’s ‘Encanto’ 

Sign up for our free, daily e-newsletter 

Always Forward - newsletter.angelusnews.com 

28 

30 

The faults of Spielberg’s well-intentioned ‘West Side Story’ remake 

Heather King on what we lose when pointing fingers 

December 31, 2021 • ANGELUS • 1

POPE WATCH 

Establishing the ordinary 

Responding to 11 questions it 

said had been raised about Pope 

Francis’ document restricting 

celebrations of the pre-Vatican II Mass, 

the Congregation for Divine Worship 

and the Sacraments offered a few 

concessions to bishops, but insisted the 

entire Latin-rite Catholic Church must 

move toward celebrating only one form 

of the Mass and sacraments. 

“It is the duty of the bishops, ‘cum 

Petro et sub Petro’ (‘with and under Peter, 

the pope’), to safeguard communion, 

which, as the apostle Paul reminds 

us, is a necessary condition for being 

able to participate at the Eucharistic 

table,” wrote Archbishop Arthur Roche, 

prefect of the congregation, in a 

formal “responsa ad dubia” (“response 

to questions”) published Dec. 18. 

Writing to the presidents of bishops’ 

conferences, the archbishop said, “As 

pastors we must not lend ourselves 

to sterile polemics, capable only of 

creating division, in which the ritual 

itself is often exploited by ideological 

viewpoints.” 

In July, Pope Francis promulgated his 

apostolic letter “Traditionis Custodes” 

(“Guardians of the Tradition”), declaring 

the liturgical books promulgated 

after the Second Vatican Council to 

be “the unique expression of the ‘lex 

orandi’ (‘law of worship’) of the Roman 

Rite,” restoring the obligation of priests 

to have their bishops’ permission to celebrate 

according to the “extraordinary” 

or pre-Vatican II Mass, and ordering 

bishops not to establish any new groups 

or parishes in their dioceses devoted to 

the old liturgy. 

The document overturned or severely 

restricted the permissions St. Pope 

John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI 

had given to celebrate the so-called 

Tridentine-rite Mass. 

2 • ANGELUS • December 31, 2021 

In his document, Pope Francis asked 

bishops to “designate one or more 

locations where the faithful adherents 

of these groups may gather for the 

eucharistic celebration,” but he said 

those locations should not be parish 

churches and the bishops should not 

establish new “personal parishes” solely 

for celebrations in the old rite. 

Archbishop Roche said several bishops 

asked about requesting permission 

from the Vatican to allow the celebrations 

in parish churches when other 

suitable locations were not available. 

“The exclusion of the parish church is 

intended to affirm that the celebration 

of the Eucharist according to the previous 

rite, being a concession limited to 

these groups, is not part of the ordinary 

life of the parish community,” the 

archbishop wrote. 

However, he said the Vatican would 

consider bishops’ requests for exceptions, 

but “such a celebration should 

not be included in the parish Mass 

schedule, since it is attended only by 

the faithful who are members of the 

said group. Finally, it should not be 

held at the same time as the pastoral 

activities of the parish community.” 

And, he said, “it is to be understood 

that when another venue becomes 

available, this permission will be withdrawn.” 

Another question regarded the use 

of other pre-Vatican II rituals for the 

celebrations of other sacraments. 

Archbishop Roche said that in certain 

settings, baptisms, confession, marriages, 

and the anointing of the sick could 

be celebrated according to the old rites, 

but not confirmation or ordination. 

Reporting courtesy of Catholic News 

Service Rome bureau chief Cindy 

Wooden. 

Papal Prayer Intention for December: Let us pray for the 

catechists, summoned to announce the word of God: 

may they be its witnesses, with courage and creativity, 

and in the power of the Holy Spirit.

NEW WORLD OF FAITH 

ARCHBISHOP JOSÉ H. GOMEZ 

Living in the life of Jesus 

As we turn the page and begin 

a new year of grace, my prayer 

for all of you is that you will enter 

into a deeper and closer friendship 

with Jesus. 

I want to invite you to adopt a new 

habit in 2022. Begin reading the 

Gospels, beginning to end, read a 

portion every day, but make sure you 

read them straight through. Start with 

the Gospel according to St. Matthew, 

chapter 1, and continue reading 

every day until you get to the end of 

the Gospel of John. Then begin the 

process again. 

If you read a chapter each day, it will 

take you 89 days to complete all of 

the Gospels. But even if you read less 

daily, the point is to spend time with 

Jesus every day and to get to know his 

story. 

In his fine new book, “The Life of 

Jesus Christ” (Our Sunday Visitor, 

$15.95), the Catholic journalist 

Russell Shaw tells how a friend of his 

— a lifelong Catholic, well-educated 

professional, active in his parish — sat 

down one day and read St. Matthew’s 

Gospel from beginning to end. It was 

the first time he had ever done that. 

He was excited, and surprised. “It’s 

telling a story!” the man exclaimed. 

We are accustomed to hearing short 

passages from the Gospels read every 

week at Sunday Mass. Sometimes it 

is hard to remember that each of the 

Gospels is telling a story, from its own 

point of view — the story of the life of 

Jesus Christ. 

And we need to know this story. That 

is why for many years now, I have 

made it part of my spiritual practices 

to spend time every day reading the 

Gospels. That is why I recommend 

it to you. Because in the life of Jesus, 

we discover the life that he wants 

each one of us to live. 

In the Gospels, we read how Jesus 

invited the disciples of St. John the 

Baptist to reflect on his words and 

deeds, what they have “seen and 

heard.” 

He invites his disciples in every age 

to do the same thing. This is how we 

get to know Jesus, and how we grow 

in friendship with him — by opening 

the pages of the Gospels to see and 

hear. 

You can trust the Gospels. They 

were written by people who knew the 

apostles, and they are based on their 

witness to what Jesus really did and 

taught. 

Read with prayer. Simply ask Jesus 

to speak to your heart through the 

words on the page. Ask for the grace 

to feel the excitement of being near 

to Jesus, and sometimes the sense of 

tension and danger. 

You can be in the room where he is 

speaking, or follow him in the streets, 

or listen to him on the plains and 

hillsides. You can be seated alongside 

the apostles in a boat next to him. 

The saints are always reading and 

rereading the Gospels, and trying 

to apply them to their own lives. St. 

Cecilia, from the time she was a little 

girl, was in the habit of hiding a copy 

of the Gospels in her clothing, close 

to her heart. 

In our own times, St. Josemaría 

Escrivá taught, “Take up the Gospel 

every day, then, and read it and live 

it as a definite rule. This is what the 

saints have done.” 

If we open our hearts to Jesus every 

day in the Gospels, over time he 

will help us to come to a deeper 

understanding of ourselves. We need 

to ask for the humility to allow him 

to question our assumptions and 

motivations, to challenge and make 

demands of us. 

Reading the life of Jesus every day, 

we come to discover our story in his 

story, and we find ourselves living the 

life of Jesus. This is how he forms our 

characters and shapes our souls in his 

divine image. 

The more time you spend with 

If we open our hearts to Jesus every day in the 

Gospels, over time he will help us to come to a 

deeper understanding of ourselves. 

Jesus, the more you will find yourself 

becoming like him — more compassionate 

and loving, more patient and 

forgiving. You will find more love in 

your relationships, a new peace in 

your heart. 

With the media in our society, there 

is so much “competition” for our 

minds and hearts, for what we think 

about and how we occupy our time. 

This year, let us resolve to fill our 

hearts and minds, not with entertainment 

or games or distractions, but 

with the life of Jesus Christ. 

Pray for me and I will pray for you. 

And let us ask our Blessed Mother 

Mary to help us to keep all the things 

of Jesus — his words, his actions, the 

scenes from his life — and to ponder 

and reflect on them in our hearts, just 

as Mary did. 


WORLD 

Volcanic rock in the Tajuya church’s Nativity scene. | BORJA SUAREZ, REUTERS 

■ Spain: A parish’s volcanic Nativity scene 

When life gives you lava, go with the flow. 

That’s the lesson from a Catholic church in the Canary 

Islands, where a nearby volcanic explosion has inspired 

changes to this year’s Nativity scene. 

The Cumbre Vieja volcano on the island of La Palma has 

been erupting since September, creating rivers of molten 

lava, prompting mass evacuations, and destroying nearly 

3,000 buildings. 

Father Domingo Guerra, pastor of the island’s Tajuya 

church, partnered with Spanish geologist Ruben Lopez to 

craft his church’s annual Nativity scene with the manger atop 

black lava and a backdrop of volcanic rock and ash. 

“We wanted to do an initiative for the Christmas spirit, in 

a place like this, where people are sad and very worried,” 

Lopez told Reuters. 

■ Ethiopia: Catholics caught 

in civil war crossfire 

Catholic missionaries are among those being targeted in a 

new wave of atrocities in the Ethiopian region of Tigray. 

According to watchdog groups, the regional Amhara 

security forces and an allied militia known as Fano were responsible 

for a surge in mass detentions, killings, and forced 

expulsions of ethnic Tigrayans in Western Tigray. According 

to the U.N., at least 1.2 million people have been displaced 

in the region since the start of the conflict. 

Several members of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent 

de Paul and an Ursuline sister were arrested last month 

in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. Earlier, 17 members 

of the Salesians — among them priests, religious brothers, 

and employees — were detained. The provincial superior 

remains in custody. 

“We urge the conflicting parties to desist from ethnic profiling, 

arbitrary arrests, and promote a peaceful coexistence,” 

said Kenyan Bishop John Oballa Owaa on behalf of an 

association of East African bishops. 

■ Where Mary Magdalene 

may have worshipped 

A second historic synagogue was uncovered at the site of 

ancient Magdala, now called Migdal, off the Sea of Galilee. 

Both synagogues date back to the Second Temple period 

more than 2,000 years ago and may have been functioning 

when Jesus visited the town, researchers believe. The first, 

discovered in 2009, is less than 200 meters from the second, 

newly discovered synagogue. 

The excavation’s director, Dina Avshalom-Gorni, said the 

discovery of the two synagogues offers clues to how Jews in 

Jesus’ time worshipped. 

“We can imagine Mary Magdalene and her family coming 

to the synagogue here, along with other residents of Migdal, 

to participate in religious and communal events,” she said. 

Catholics at the liturgy for the consecration of Bahrain’s new cathedral. | CNS/REUTERS 

■ The Blessed Mother’s Arabian dream 

The Virgin Mary has a big church to call home in one of 

the world’s smallest countries. 

The Dec. 10 inauguration of the Cathedral of Our Lady 

of Arabia in Bahrain drew local Muslim and government 

authorities, as well as Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, head 

of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Evangelization of 

Peoples. 

With its modern aesthetic and seating for more than 

2,300, the cathedral is only the second church on the 

predominately Muslim island. Previously, 25 weekend 

Masses had been required between the island’s one church 

and a suburban chapel to minister to the more than 90,000 

Catholics on the island — the majority of them immigrant 

workers. 

At the inauguration Mass, Cardinal Tagle encouraged 

those Catholics to make the cathedral their home. 

“God eagerly awaits you. It would be a pity to have a beautiful 

house with no one living there.” 

4 • ANGELUS • December 31, 2021

NATION 

A composite photo 

showing the damage 

to the Fátima statue. 

| CNS 

■ DC Fátima statue vandalized 

Vandals cut off the nose and hands of a statue of Our Lady 

of Fátima near the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception 

in Washington, D.C. 

The damage was discovered Dec. 5. The statue, which was 

dedicated in 2017 for the 100th anniversary of the Marian 

apparitions in Fátima, Portugal, is part of the shrine’s rosary 

garden. 

“Though we are deeply pained by this incident, we pray 

for the perpetrator through the intercession of the Blessed 

Virgin Mary under her title of Our Lady of Fátima,” Msgr. 

Walter Rossi, rector of the national shrine, said in a statement. 

More than 100 acts of vandalism against Catholic churches 

have been reported since May. No suspect has been arrested 

at this time. 

Homage to “la morenita” — Parishioners perform in a dramatization of Our 

Lady of Guadalupe’s appearance to St. Juan Diego following a Spanish-language 

Mass marking the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe at Resurrection Church in 

Farmingville, New York, on Dec. 12. | CNS/GREGORY A. SHEMITZ 

■ Kentucky: Catholics offer help 

and hope after deadly tornadoes 

Catholics around the country and overseas are rallying to 

help relief efforts in nine states after a series of severe tornadoes 

devastated communities. 

Bishop William Medley of Owensboro, Kentucky, told 

media outlets that several U.S. bishops had informed him of 

collections in their dioceses to help tornado victims, while 

Pope Francis sent him a written message and led prayers for 

Kentucky during the Sunday Angelus Dec. 12. 

Kentucky was the hardest hit by the storm, with 74 confirmed 

deaths, including workers from a candle factory who 

were trapped when the building collapsed with them inside. 

At a Dec. 12 Mass with local Catholics displaced by the 

storm, Bishop Medley said that the Catholic church that had 

suffered the most damage in the diocese, in Dawson Springs, 

was named after the Resurrection. 

“The theme of the Resurrection will be core to our 

thoughts during this very difficult process,” he said. 

A badly damaged church 

in Mayfield, Kentucky, 

after a tornado ripped 

through the town. | 

CNS/CHENEY ORR, 

REUTERS 

■ Some gain, more lose 

faith during pandemic 

Even though nearly a third of Americans say their faith 

grew stronger during the COVID-19 pandemic, religious 

affiliation has fallen again, according to a new Pew Research 

Center survey. 

“[T]hat group, the people who say their faith has been 

strengthened, is concentrated among those who were 

already highly religious,” Greg Smith, associate director of 

research at Pew and author of the study, told the Wall Street 

Journal. “There’s not a lot of evidence of people who were 

not that religious before March 2020 who have become so.” 

Americans with no religious affiliation continued to grow, 

with 29% of Americans identifying as having no religion, 

up from 26% in 2019 and 16% in 2007. The bulk of that 

group identify as “nothing in particular,” meaning they may 

believe in God but are unlikely to pray or attend services. 

Meanwhile, the percentage of Americans who identify as 

Christians dropped 2% since 2019 to only 63%. In 2007, 

78% of Americans identified as Christian. 


LOCAL 

Jacob Cruz’s award-winning Christmas piece. | CNS 

■ Newsom eyes making 

California an abortion 

‘sanctuary’ 

California’s Catholic bishops 

slammed a new plan endorsed by 

Gov. Gavin Newsom to make the state 

a “sanctuary” for legal abortion if Roe 

v. Wade is overturned. 

“It is absurd for the state to focus 

on expanding abortion when the real 

needs of families for basic necessities 

remain unmet,” said Kathleen 

Buckley Domingo, executive director 

for the California Catholic Conference 

(CCC) in a statement issued 

Dec. 9. “California doesn’t need more 

abortion. It needs to support women 

and help them be the mothers they 

want to be.” 

The report was released by a group 

of more than 40 abortion providers 

and advocacy groups led by Planned 

Parenthood. Their 45 recommendations 

include using taxpayer money to 

help pay for travel expenses, lodging, 

child care, and abortion procedures 

for women from out of state seeking 

an abortion. 

Domingo also reaffirmed the bishops’ 

support for “nonviolent solutions 

to issues that women face,” such as 

affordable health care, paid family 

leave, and the resources offered by the 

more than 150 pregnancy care centers 

in California. 

■ LA 

Catholic 

students 

win big in 

national 

art contest 

Christmas came 

early for a local 

Catholic school 

seventh-grader. 

Jacob Cruz of 

St. Philomena 

School in Carson 

traveled with his 

family to Washington, 

D.C., 

where he was named one of two grand 

prize winners Dec. 3 in an annual 

Christmas artwork contest sponsored 

by the Missionary Childhood Association. 

Cruz’s drawing, which depicts the 

Virgin Mary holding the Child Jesus 

against a colorful background, will be 

featured on the official Pontifical Mission 

Societies Christmas card this year. 

In addition, two other students from 

the Archdiocese of Los Angeles were 

also honored as national finalists: 

eighth-graders Mina Michalski of St. 

Francis de Sales School in Sherman 

Oaks and Justina Yoon of Beatitudes of 

Our Lord School in La Mirada. 

■ Adopt-A-Family 

stepping up efforts 

during second COVID 

Christmas 

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ 

annual Adopt-a-Family program is 

finding ways in its 31st year to help 

struggling families this Christmas 

despite limitations imposed by 

COVID-19. 

More than 400 families in need 

will receive gift cards and monetary 

donations to help with rent and utility 

costs through the program, organizers 

said. Some of the program’s big-name 

sponsors this year include Target, the 

Los Angeles Dodgers, and Netflix. 

Since volunteers were not able to 

conduct door-to-door interviews to 

identify families in need this year, the 

program has partnered with outreach 

centers, including the Salesian Family 

Youth Center, the LAPD Cadet program, 

and the St. Francis Center to 

reach families. 

“We’re seeing big generosity from 

people stepping up to help, not just 

from longtime donors, but from new 

ones who hear about the program,” 

said Lydia Gamboa, director of the 

archdiocesan Mission Office. 

To make a donation or learn more 

about the program, visit AdoptAFamily.org. 

Midnight serenade — An ensemble of vocal artists — including local singers Jacky Ibarra and Julian Torres — 

along with a trio of religious from the Poor of Jesus Christ, serenade the Virgin Mary during the annual midnight 

Dec. 12 “Mananitas” Mass in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. | 



IN OTHER WORDS... 

Top Ten of 2021 

As we approach the end of 2021, here is a list of the 10 most-read articles on 

AngelusNews.com during the past year. To re-read them all, visit AngelusNews. 

com/TopStories2021. 

1. “If you’re a Western Christian, your spiritual ancestry is African” 

~ Mike Aquilina 

2. “The two ‘obvious’ papal trips Francis is hesitant to make” 

~ Inés San Martín 

3. “How insomnia led me to a friendship with ‘Sleeping St. Joseph’ ” 

~ Elise Italiano Ureneck 

4. “Just like Thanksgiving, Vatican drops hints to keep unwanted relatives away” 

~ John L. Allen Jr. 

5. “Down the rabbit hole into LA’s Skid Row” 

~ Robert Brennan 

6. “A Jesuit pope defies do-nothing expectations on the liturgy” 


7. “Why is it so dangerous to be a Christian in Nigeria?” 


8. “The untold story of an LA priest’s brush with death in Africa” 

~ Ann Rodgers 

9. “Bishop Barron: Why the Church can’t stay woke — or stay quiet” 

~ Pablo Kay 

10. “It’s time to start telling the truth about St. Junípero Serra” 

~ Angelus Staff 

From Rome to Ventura 

“How many people 

remember that, pre-fire, 

[the works of art in Notre 

Dame Cathedral] were 

an ill-kept hodgepodge 

generally passed over by 

tourists in search of an 

Instagram-worthy shot of 

the windows?” 

~ Elizabeth Lev in a Dec. 8 op-ed in the Washington 

Post, “Sorry, Internet: Notre Dame is not being 

‘wreckovated’ .” 

“There is true beauty in 

the intricate intimacies of 

our lives. … Maybe some 

beautiful moments are 

worth sharing, but many 

beautiful moments are 

worth keeping to yourself.” 

~ Hannah Cote, in a Dec. 12 Federalist article, “Adele 

crossed the line on ‘30’ .” 

“It’s frustrating. People just 

seem to want to leave home 

less these days.” 

~ Meredith Mills, a Methodist minister in Houston, 

in a Dec. 20 Associated Press story on the struggle 

to rebuild church attendance across the U.S. 

“The Age of Faith isn’t over. 

It’s never over in a believing 

heart.” 

~ Francis Maier, in a Dec. 14 First Things article about 

Christmas music, “The music of the season.” 

Archbishop José H. Gomez and Father Tom Elewaut, pastor of Mission Basilica San Buenaventura, hold the Vatican 

decree from June 2020 officially elevating the mission to the rank of “minor basilica” at a Dec. 19 Mass of Thanksgiving. 

The event, which included a candlelight procession and a garden reception afterward, was postponed to this year 

due to the pandemic. | VICTOR ALEMÁN 

View more photos from this gallery 

at AngelusNews.com/photos-videos 

Do you have photos or a story from your parish that you’d like to share? Please send to editorial @angelusnews.com. 

“The smile we get in return 

is oftentimes something 

money cannot buy.” 

~ Dr. Fabrizio Michelan of the Vatican’s St. Martha 

pediatric clinic, in remarks during Pope Francis’ 85th 

birthday celebration with migrant children from the 

clinic. 


IN EXILE 

FATHER RONALD ROLHEISER, OMI 

Oblate of Mary Immaculate Father 

Ronald Rolheiser is a spiritual 

writer; ronaldrolheiser.com. 

Listening to our souls 

During the Nazi occupation 

of France in World War II, 

a group of Jesuit theologians 

who were resisting the occupation 

published an underground newspaper, 

Cahiers du Temoignage Chretien, 

which had a famous opening line in 

its first issue: “France, take care not to 

lose your soul.” That brought to mind 

a comment I once heard from Father 

Peter Hans Kolvenbach, then the 

superior general of the Jesuits. Speaking 

of globalization, he commented 

that one of the things he feared about 

globalization was “the globalization of 

triviality.” Fair warning! 

Today we are witnessing a trivialization 

of soul within the culture. Few 

things are sublime anymore, meaning 

few things are soulful anymore. 

Things that used to have deep meaning 

are now related to more casually. 

Take sex, for instance. More and more 

(with a few churches being the sole 

holdouts) the culture believes that sex 

need not be soulful, unless you want it 

to be and personally invest it with such 

meaning. 

For example, I recently heard an 

argument in which someone downplayed 

the moral seriousness of a 

teacher sleeping with one his students 

with this logic: What’s the difference 

between this and a professor playing a 

game of tennis with his student? His 

point? Sex needn’t be special unless 

you want it to be special. What makes 

sex different from a game of tennis? 

Only someone dangerously naive 

does not see a huge soulful difference 

here. A game of tennis does not touch 

the soul with any depth. Sex does, 

and not just because some churches 

say so. We see this when it is violated. 

Sigmund Freud once said that we 

understand things most clearly when 

we see them broken. He’s right, and 

nowhere is this clearer than in how 

sexual violence and exploitive sex 

affect a person. 

When sex is wrong, there is violation 

of soul that dwarfs anything that ever 

results from a tennis game. Sex is not 

soulful because some churches say so. 

It’s soulful because it’s connected to 

the soul in ways that tennis isn’t. Ironically, 

just as the culture is trivializing 

society’s traditional view on sex as 

innately soulful, persons working with 

those suffering sexual trauma are seeing 

ever more clearly how exploitive 

sex is on a radically different plane, in 

terms of soul, than playing tennis with 

someone. 

However, it’s not just that we are trivializing 

the soulful; we are also struggling 

to hear our souls. It’s noteworthy 

that today this warning is coming not 

as much from the churches as from 

a wide range of voices, from agnostic 

philosophers to Jungian analysts. For 

example, the leit motif in the writings 

of the agnostic philosopher of soul, 

James Hillman, is that the task of life 

is to live soulfully, and we can do that 

only by truly listening to our souls. 

And, he submits, there’s a lot at stake 

here. In a book entitled, “Suicide and 

the Soul,” he suggests that what sometimes 

happens in a suicide is that the 

soul, unable to make its cries heard, 

eventually kills the body. 

Depth psychology offers similar 

insights and suggests that the presence 

in our lives of certain symptoms like 

depression, excess anxiety, guilt disorders, 

and the need to self-medicate 

are often the soul’s cries to be heard. 

James Hollis suggests that sometimes 

when we have bad dreams it’s because 

our soul is angry with us, and suggests 

that in the face of these symptoms (depression, 

anxiety, guilt, bad dreams) 

we need to ask ourselves, “What does 

my soul want from me?” 

Indeed, what do our souls want from 

us? They want many things, though 

in essence, they want three things: to 

be protected, to be honored, and to be 

listened to. 

First, our souls need to be protected 

from violation and trivialization. What 

lies deepest inside us, at the center of 

our souls, is something Thomas Merton 

once described as “le point vierge” 

(“the virgin point”). All that is most 

sacred, tender, true, and vulnerable in 

us is housed there, and while our souls 

send us constant cries wanting protection, 

they cannot protect themselves. 

They need us to protect their “point 

vierge.” 

Second, our souls need to be honored, 

their sacredness fully respected, 

their depth properly recognized. Our 

soul is the “burning bush” before 

which we need to stand with our shoes 

off, reverent. To lose that reverence is 

to trivialize our own depth. 

Finally, our souls need to be heard. 

Their cries, their beckonings, their 

resistances, and the dreams they give 

us while we sleep, need to be heard. 

Moreover, they need to be heard not 

only when they are buoyant, but also 

when they are heavy, sad, and angry. 

As well, we need to hear both their 

plea for protection and their challenge 

to us to take risks. 

Soul is a precious thing worth protecting. 

It’s the deepest voice inside 

us, speaking for what’s most important 

and most soulful in our lives, and so 

we need ever to heed the warning: 

Take care not to lose your soul. 


Safe with the 

SISTERS 

They take in single moms, 

seek out homeless people in need, and evangelize in the 

streets: Even in a pandemic, the Missionaries of Charity 

in Lynwood are a fearless bunch. 

BY STEVE LOWERY / PHOTOGRAPHY BY VICTOR ALEMAN 

The “ladies” of the Missionaries of Charity convent at St. Emydius in Lynwood include not only nuns, but single and expectant mothers in need. 


It’s only 10 a.m., but the sisters of the Missionaries 

of Charity at St. Emydius Church in Lynwood have 

already put in a day’s worth of work. 

In the last six hours, they have prayed — both together 

and on their own — and gone to Mass before splitting up 

to tackle an array of daily household chores: preparing 

breakfast, making beds, cleaning the convent. 

Depending on what day of the week it is, they will spend 

the rest of it either on the streets seeking out the homeless, 

teaching catechism to parish children, attending to 

the needs of the infants and expectant mothers living with 

“This is a safe place,” said one 

expectant mother living with the 

sisters. “You can’t find many safe 

places when you’re by yourself.” 

them in their convent, picking up food donations from 

food banks and local businesses, or distributing that food 

to the needy of their neighborhood. 

It has been like this for more than 30 years at the convent 

next to St. Emydius, founded in 1989 by Mother 

Teresa of Calcutta, the future saint who visited several 

times — including a two-month stay. 

Those on the receiving end of their charity agree on 

their most remarkable trait: how happy they are. 

“They do so much, they’re always busy, but they’re 

always smiling,” said Karlneesha, who has lived at the 

convent since September. “They’re just so nice.” 

Karlneesha, who doesn’t look a day over 20, is expecting 

her first child, due on Christmas Day. When she talks 

about the sisters, she seems rather amazed not only by 

what they do, but how they go about it. Especially since, 

she admitted, she has not been the easiest person to be 

around lately. 

“This is my first pregnancy, I’m actually a nice person,” 

Karlneesha said, her voice now rising over the giggles of 

several of the sisters sitting nearby. 

“But sometimes my mood swings will be all over the 

place (the giggles grow); it’s like a monster jumped out of 

me (giggles become guffaws). I’m like, if this is pregnancy, 

I don’t want to be pregnant anymore (flat out laughter).” 

The sisters laugh because, first, Karlneesha is gifted at 

making just about any statement funny. Take, for example, 

her realization that her child, destined to celebrate 

a birthday and Christmas at the same time every year, 

means that she has to make peace with “being broke every 

Christmas.” 

But they also laugh because the idea that Karlneesha is 

facing issues or problems they haven’t seen before is, well, 

laughable. 

Since the convent was founded, the sisters have given 

shelter to countless pregnant women who have struggled 

with a host of complications presented by a world that, at 

times, seems set up to make their lives difficult; a world 

that can bring fear not only for them, but for the child 

they are carrying. 

“This is a safe place,” said Michelle, who has been at the 

house since November and is due to give birth in April. 

“You can’t find many safe places when you’re by yourself.” 

The sisters, dressed in the familiar white and blue habit 

made famous by Mother Teresa, are quick to produce a 

stack of photo albums containing page after page of photos 

of smiling women. In many of their photos they are 

holding their babies, since women are welcome to stay at 

the convent after giving birth. 

“One year, we had eight ladies here with eight babies, all 

girls,” said one of the Lynwood nuns, Sister Chandrika. 

“They said that no boys were allowed!” 

If Karlneesha thinks her mood swings are hard on the sisters, 

imagine the decibel level of multiple babies expressing 

themselves. And yet, says another nun, Sister Xaveria, 

the crying makes the sisters “happy.” 

After getting pregnant, a providential phone call led Karlneesha to live at the 

St. Emydius convent. Her due date is Christmas Day. 


“In the crying there is joy,” she said. “The crying moves 

the ladies to help each other, it’s beautiful to see. If there 

is no one to help, then we take care of it.” 

Taking care sometimes means throwing a baby shower 

for those women who have no family nearby. Their ability 

to draw joy from any situation, whether it’s feeding the 

community through their weekly Friday food giveaway 

outside the convent, or simply sweeping the kitchen floor, 

amazes just about everyone — even those who have made 

a similar commitment to service. 

“They reach out, to teach the gospel, to prepare people 

for sacraments, to provide food and comfort, they 

provide a wonderful instrument for evangelization 

in the whole Church,” said St. Emydius Church 

pastor Father Rigoberto Rodriguez. “They 

The nuns give out food donated by food banks and local businesses outside their convent in Lynwood every Friday. 


St. Teresa of Calcutta, or 

“Mother Teresa” as she is best 

known, in a photo by Angelus 

photo editor Victor Alemán 

during her 1991 visit to Los 

Angeles. She founded and 

spent time at the convent 

where the Missionaries of 

Charity still live in Lynwood. 

Teresa such as, “The child is a life from God, created in 

the image of God, created for great things, to love and to 

be loved.” 

But they also contain reminders for the convent’s residents, 

with housekeeping advice: “If you open it, close it. 

If you turn it on, turn it off. If you borrow it, return it.” 

Their work extends far outside the convent. Just ask 

associate pastor Father Cesar Guardado, assigned to St. 

Emydius since being ordained a priest six months ago. 

The sisters take him along when they hit the streets, making 

him available to hear confessions. 

“They are absolutely fearless, they go anywhere that they 

think they can help,” said Father Guardado. “They have 

no fear of sickness, no fear of someone others might think 

of as dirty.” 

Father Guardado admitted he was intimidated the first 

time he went on one of their street missions. One moment 

they were preparing strangers for confession, he 

recalled, the next they were sweeping the street. 

“They are relentless and yet they do it all with a smile,” 

he remarked. 

Sister Chandrika extends her own care to the 29-year-old 

priest, too, telling him a joke every day and encouraging 

serve everyone through their ministries. They truly have 

the same spirit as their founder.” 

Pausing, he then added as seemingly everyone does, 

“And they are so nice. I love them to be here.” 

And they are here for everyone. Neither Karlneesha or 

Michelle are Catholic. Neither is Alicia, a young woman 

who experienced homelessness for several years, and recently 

gave birth to a baby daughter who has since passed 

away. 

She came to the sisters hoping to “heal,” and has found 

herself feeling “closer to God.” 

“He’s real, he’s here, I can see it here, in the way I’m 

cared for, the way they care for everybody,” said Alicia. 

For years, Alicia “was around a lot of people who did a 

lot of drugs, and I wanted to get away from all that. Here, 

I’m just trying to dodge obstacles, and I feel like he is 

watching over me through the sisters. It’s made my belief 

that much stronger.” 

Similarly, Michelle found herself on her own: no family 

in the area, feeling vulnerable, lost, and emotionally “just 

broken.” 

“It was like I was on my own, I had to figure it out. They 

gave me the option to get it together and figure it out. 

And get closer to God. He is our everything, he gets us 

through it all. Just to be able to get on my feet, to be able 

to take care of myself and my child.” 

That feeling of safety is built on a spiritual structure of 

prayer and work that helps the sisters meet the material 

and spiritual needs of those they encounter. 

The convent’s walls contain aphorisms from Mother 

Michelle (left) has been living with the sisters since November and is due to deliver 

her child in April. 


him with Mother Teresa’s famous quote: “Saints are never 

tired.” 

The reach of their efforts is all the more impressive 

when you consider that the sisters employ practically no 

new technology. No internet or social media. No televisions 

in the convent. When a reporter shows up to do 

a story about them, there’s no website to refer them to 

— just a single page of college-ruled notebook paper on 

which, neatly printed in ink, is a brief description of the 

order’s mission. 

“There is a lot of work, but seeing 

them happy, we are made more 

happy,” said one sister of the people 

she serves. 

“Through all we do, we want to help them experience 

God’s love and care,” it reads. “And many people are 

touched by the little things we do. Sometimes a ‘Hello’ 

and a smile is all they need to experience that love.” 

Rather than holding them back, the lack of reliance 

on technology seems to make the sisters more available 

to the ones who need them most. Both Karlneesha and 

Michelle, for instance, said their decision to come to the 

convent was owed in part to a simple answered phone 

call. 

Both had called 211, a resource for essential community 

resources, and each had been given the name of Missionaries 

of Charity and glowing reviews. 

“I called about nine o’clock at night and someone 

actually answered the phone,” Michelle said, her voice 

still belying amazement. “I was surprised someone was 

answering that late at night. Actually, I was amazed 

someone was answering. I’ve gotten so used to hearing a 

recording, you know?” 

Karlneesha also called in the evening. 

“Someone said ‘Hello!’ And I was like, ‘Oh shoot! I was 

not expecting that.” 

The sisters told her to come that Friday, since Thursday 

is the day totally dedicated to prayer. 

“I was like ‘Wow, that was easy,’ ” recalled Karlneesha. 

“Other places you need so much paperwork, but with 

them, it was just come on by and we’ll talk.” 

It’s that simplicity that not only brings people to the 

convent, but back year after year, too. This year, the sisters 

will throw their annual Christmas party, attended by 

many of those women and children in the photo albums. 

One of those children is now 18, and returns weekly to 

help the sisters give catechism class for children. 

Though she’s not due until the spring, Michelle said she 

On Fridays, the sisters pray the rosary 

before giving out food to the needy. 

already understands the hold that this place — and these 

nuns — have on people. She dreams of one day being 

able to “give back” because “they’ve done so much for 

me.” 

“They don’t have to, they do it out of the goodness of 

their heart. It was not an obligation. They made me feel 

welcomed and cared for.” 

Sister Z. John Janice smiled to hear Michelle say those 

words, but quickly interjected that “we get more than we 

give. There is a lot of work, but seeing them happy, we 

are made more happy,” she explained. 

Karlneesha said it’s that attitude of spirit, that approach 

to life that she will take from this place. 

“Their traditions, Catholicism, for my daughter, I’ll be 

able to tell her the things I’ve seen. That people are good. 

I’ll be able to teach her about Mother Teresa and what I 

learned here. I’ll be able to give all that to her.” 

Steve Lowery is a veteran journalist who has written for 

several local publications including the Los Angeles Times, 

the Los Angeles Daily News, Long Beach Post, and the 

OC Weekly. 



Jose Fuentes and his two sons with the Nativity scene they built at Our Lady of Sorrows in Santa Barbara. | MARIA ORTIZ 

Bringing the world together 

After a long delay, a Santa Barbara family’s special Nativity 

scene is inviting people back to church. 

BY MIKE NELSON 

This time of year, Nativity scenes 

are standard components of almost 

every church’s Christmas 

setup. But there is nothing standard 

about the Nativity scene at Our Lady 

of Sorrows Church in Santa Barbara, 

where a dedicated parishioner has, 

quite literally, lit up the church with 

his own culturally inspired creation. 

Sure, the Holy Family is prominently 

featured in the area below the Blessed 

Virgin Mary altar to one side of the 

sanctuary of the church, a few steps 

off of State Street in the center of 

town. Below them, however, spreads 

a large village that looks more like 

a 21st-century community than old 

Bethlehem. 

Not only are there streets and houses 

and shops, but there is a spinning 

ferris wheel, a musical carousel, an 

ice rink with skaters skating, and lights 

galore, soft but plentiful. People, pets, 

and Christmas trees are scattered 

about on the “snowy” landscape, 

reflecting the peace, comfort, and joy 

that is synonymous with the season. 

And why not? 

“Our Nativity scene represents the 

world, that Christ is for everyone, 

today, yesterday, and tomorrow,” 

said Cara Crosetti, parish business 

manager. “That’s something many of 


us often forget; we focus on the birth 

of baby Jesus without recognizing that 

Christ is always present in our world. 

And that reality, I think, is very much 

on display in what Jose has created.” 

“Jose” is Jose Fuentes, by day a 

stone-cutter and finisher, and by night 

— at least, in recent weeks — an artist 

with a passion for creating Nativity 

scenes like those he grew up with in 

his native Mexico. 

“This is how I express my faith in 

God — through my work on this 

project,” said Fuentes, who came to 

the U.S. 20 years ago with his family 

from Mexico. “I always make Nativity 

scenes at Christmas, as I did in Mexico 

every year. And ever since I came 

to Santa Barbara, I’ve been doing this 

at home.” 

Fuentes’ passion for Nativity scenes 

came to the attention of Father Cesar 

Magallon, Our Lady of Sorrows’ 

pastor, when he and Father Mario 

Torrez, associate pastor, visited the 

Fuentes home two years ago. 

“We saw this beautiful Nativity scene 

in his home, and we were amazed 

at how creative it was,” said Father 

Magallon. “I said to Jose, ‘Hey, maybe 

you could think about doing this at 

church one day.’ And he was open to 

the idea.” 

Then along came COVID-19, precluding 

attendance at Mass, much less 

any sort of elaborate environment. But 

when Father Magallon saw Jose again 

recently, he repeated the request. 

“I told him, ‘We have the space, so 

go for it,’ ” said Father Magallon. 

And for nearly three weeks, Fuentes 

— aided by his two teenage sons 

— worked from 5 p.m. until almost 

midnight each night, after a day at 

work, building the Nativity scene from 

an assortment of materials, including 

wood, paper, and spray foam as well as 

tiny lights and two water features. 

The finished product is reminiscent 

of Nativity scenes found in other 

countries, including Mexico, said 

Father Magallon, a native of Uruapan, 

Michoacán, 260 miles west of Mexico 

City. 

“Where I come from, these scenes 

are all over because all people 

have different ways of expressing 

their faith,” he 

A detail from the Nativity 

scene at Our Lady of 

Sorrows. | FATHER 

CESAR MAGALLON 

explained. “But 

here, people are 

taken by such 

creativity that 

really brings the 

worlds of yesterday 

and today 

together.” 

Christ’s presence in the world for all 

time — a point made clearly at the 

start of the Easter Vigil liturgy as the 

Easter candle is lit — is a theme that 

Crosetti, an RCIA catechist at the 

3,000-family parish, tries to get across 

in her weekly sessions with catechumens 

who are being initiated into the 

Catholic faith. 

In fact, “I am leading a group meeting 

on this very topic, and part of that 

session will include a ‘field trip’ from 

the hall to the Nativity scene in the 

church,” she told Angelus. 

And after so long of a period with 

limited access to inside-the-church 

worship, parishioners and visitors 

alike are expected to make field trips 

of their own to get a peek at Fuentes’ 

one-of-a-kind creation at Our Lady of 

Sorrows, whose own roots trace to St. 

Junípero Serra’s celebration of Mass 

on the site of what became the Presidio 

Chapel in the early 1780s. 

“I believe Jose is expressing not only 

his own artistic genius,” said Father 

Magallon, “but his deep faith in Jesus 

who is with us always.” 

Mike Nelson is the former editor of 

The Tidings (predecessor of Angelus). 


Headlines from Rome 

A look back at the Top 5 Vatican 

stories of 2021 

BY JOHN L. ALLEN JR. 

A crucifix and a statue of St. Joseph are seen in the Apostolic 

Library with Pope Francis in the background. The pope 

declared 2021 the Year of St. Joseph. | VATICAN MEDIA/CNS 

ROME – To be honest, 2021 

wasn’t really a banner year in 

terms of Vatican news. This 

wasn’t 2013, with the surprise resignation 

of Pope Benedict XVI and the 

election of history’s first Latin American 

pope, nor was it even 2016, with 

the avalanche within Catholicism 

triggered by Pope Francis’ “Amoris 

Laetitia” (“The Joy of Love”) . 

By now, the broad contours of Pope 

Francis’ papacy are clear and no 

longer generate the same tumult. 

Instead, what we saw over the last 12 

months was more akin to a series of 

vignettes, each fascinating in its own 

way, even if none may represent a 

generation-defining historical turning 

point. 

Herewith, then, a highly subjective 

list of the Top 5 Vatican stories of 

2021, with the full expectation that 

the news flow out of the Eternal City 

will continue unabated in the new 

year – let’s face it, from a reporter’s 

point of view, the Vatican is just the 

gift that keeps on giving. 

5. Biden and the U.S. bishops 

Technically, the relationship 

between a head of state and his or 

her local bishops’ conference isn’t a 

Vatican story, but when that leader is 

the president of the United States, the 

stakes go up and Rome, inevitably, 

becomes a player. That’s especially 

foreordained when POTUS is also 

a Roman Catholic, as in the case of 

President Joe Biden. 

When the U.S. bishops first announced 

they were considering a 

document on the Eucharist that might 

bear on the intensely debated issue of 

whether Biden and other pro-abortion 

rights Catholic politicians should be 

denied Communion, the Vatican’s 

Congregation for the Doctrine of the 

Faith dispatched a strongly worded 

letter in May urging them to stand 

down. 

U.S. President Joe Biden 

meets with Pope Francis at 

the Vatican Oct. 29. 

| VATICAN MEDIA/CNS 


The bishops nevertheless voted to 

go ahead with the document, which 

was read in some circles as a gesture 

of defiance to both Biden and Pope 

Francis. The perceived tension lent 

an atmosphere of drama when Biden 

made what would otherwise have 

been considered a largely pro forma 

visit to the Vatican in late October, 

while in Europe for a G20 summit. 

Not only did Pope Francis and Biden 

have an unusually long 75-minute private 

meeting, but afterward Biden told 

reporters the pontiff had complimented 

him on being a “good Catholic” 

and told him to continue receiving 

Communion. 

While the Vatican never confirmed 

those remarks, they never denied 

them either, and the clear impression 

was left that Rome was not uncomfortable 

with the result. 

Not long afterward the U.S. bishops 

adopted their document, basically 

avoiding the Communion question altogether 

— which, by default, means 

no real change to the status quo, in 

which each bishop decides such matters 

on his own. 

4. The ‘Trial of the Century’ 

In July, the Vatican’s promoter of 

justice, in effect its chief prosecutor, 

issued a sprawling indictment of 10 individuals, 

including, for the very first 

time, a prince of the Church, Italian 

Cardinal Angelo Becciu, along with a 

handful of corporate outfits, charging 

them with corruption, embezzlement, 

and other forms of financial crime. 

The Vatican’s civil tribunal ordered 

the defendants to stand trial over the 

accusations, which center mostly on 

a failed $400 million real estate deal 

carried out by the Secretariat of State 

Vatican Judge Giuseppe 

Pignatone listens during 

the third session of the 

trial of six defendants accused 

of financial crimes, 

including Cardinal Angelo 

Becciu, at the Vatican 

City State criminal court 

on Nov. 17. | VATICAN 

MEDIA/CNS 

and featuring the purchase of a former 

Harrods warehouse in the posh London 

neighborhood of Chelsea. 

At the time, Vatican spokespersons 

heralded the trial, unprecedented 

both in scope and in the inclusion 

of a cardinal, as the ultimate proof of 

the success of Pope Francis’ financial 

reforms. 

By the end of 2021, however, it was 

beginning to seem like the “Trial of 

the Century” could end as the “Trainwreck 

of the Century.” 

The main bone of contention is a 

series of audio and video recordings 

made by prosecutors of their key 

witnesses, which they first refused to 

turn over to defense lawyers as part 

of the discovery process, and then, 

in response to repeated court orders, 

submitted in redacted form with about 

two hours of missing material. 

It’s still not clear when, or if, the 

court and defense attorneys will get 

the unexpurgated version, or whether, 

by now, the process has been so fatally 

tainted as to render the equivalent of 

a mistrial inevitable. Presiding Justice 

Giuseppe Pignatone is expected to 

issue a series of rulings in late January, 

describing the current situation as an 

“open construction site” in a mid-December 

hearing. 

3. Latin Mass 

If one of Pope Benedict XVI’s signature 

decisions was his 2007 document 

“Summorum Pontificum” (“Of 

the Supreme Pontiffs”) liberalizing 

celebration of the older, pre-Vatican 

II Latin Mass, then Pope Francis’ 

“Traditionis Custodes” (“Custodians 

of Tradition”), issued in July, rolling 

back those permissions and adding 

some new restrictions of his own, was 

equally emblematic. 

Especially taken in tandem with 

the February departure of conservative 

Cardinal Robert Sarah as Pope 

Francis’ liturgy czar, “Traditionis 

Custodes” was the ultimate proof for 

more tradition-minded Catholics that 

Pope Francis just isn’t their guy. 

Nor did the Vatican appear cowed by 

backlash from the traditionalist camp. 

Not long after Pope Francis’ document 

appeared, British Archbishop 

Arthur Roche, Pope Francis’ handpicked 

successor to Cardinal Sarah, 

gave interviews essentially suggesting 

it’s time for the entire Church to get 

on with the liturgical reforms of Vatican 

Council II and drop any nostalgia 

for times past, and the pope’s own 

Diocese of Rome banned the use of 

older liturgical books for Holy Week 

celebrations. 

A priest elevates the 

Eucharist during a 

traditional Latin Mass 

on July 18, at St. Josaphat 

Church in the Queens 

borough of New York 

City. | GREGORY A. 

SHEMITZ/CNS 


2. Colon surgery 

In early July, the Vatican announced 

that Pope Francis was heading to 

Rome’s famed Gemelli Hospital to 

undergo a “planned” surgery to treat 

“symptomatic diverticular stenosis” of 

the colon, a condition that involves 

bulges in the wall of the large intestine 

that can lead to a narrowing of 

the colon, often producing bloating 

and abdominal pain. 

(As a footnote, Pope Francis actually 

chose July 4 to reveal his condition 

to the world, thereby capsizing many 

expat Independence Day celebrations 

in the Eternal City.) 

Initially, Pope Francis was expected 

to return to the Vatican after just a 

couple of days of recovery, but, in 

the end, he spent 10 days in Gemelli 

before going home. It was the first 

hospitalization of Pope Francis’ papacy, 

and the first real health scare for 

the now 85-year-old pontiff since his 

election in 2013. 

Though the Vatican has never said 

so out loud, it’s widely believed that 

recovery from the surgery proved 

more protracted than expected, 

perhaps influencing, among other 

things, Pope Francis’ decisions about 

travel. Prior to the COP26 summit in 

Glasgow, Scotland, for example, he 

told a reporter that the only reason he 

wouldn’t go would be his health; in 

the end, the pope was a no-show. 

While in general Pope Francis’ 

health seems robust, leaving him well 

enough to complete a demanding 

recent trip to Cyprus and Greece, 

the colon surgery nevertheless was a 

reminder of his mortality, and also, 

Pope Francis gives a rosary 

to a member of the 

medical staff at Gemelli 

University Hospital in 

Rome on July 11, as 

he recovers following 

scheduled colon surgery. 

The pope was in 

the hospital for 10 days. 

| VATICAN MEDIA/CNS 

VIA REUTERS 

perhaps, provided motive in some 

quarters to begin thinking about what 

might come next. 

1. The pope in Iraq 

Against all odds, Pope Francis took a 

high-stakes trip to Iraq over four eventful 

days, March 5-8, arguably the most 

significant overseas journey of his own 

papacy, and one of the most meaningful 

of all time. 

Pope Francis visited the cities of Ur, 

Baghdad, Najaf, Qaraqosh, Erbil, 

and Mosul, meaning he traveled not 

only to the usual sites of biblical and 

political significance, but also to the 

cradle of Christianity in northern Iraq 

devastated by an ISIS occupation 

Pope Francis participates in a memorial prayer for the victims of the war at 

Hosh al-Bieaa (church square) in Mosul, Iraq, March 7. | PAUL HARING/CNS 

from 2014 to 2017. 

The fact the trip happened at all, in 

the teeth of the COVID-19 pandemic 

and chronic security concerns, 

testified to the depths of Pope Francis’ 

desire to go. There were many 

highlights, but images from Najaf of 

the pope with Grand Ayatollah Sayyid 

Ali al-Husayni al-Sistani, the spiritual 

leader of Iraq’s Shia Muslim community 

and one of the most important 

figures in Islam globally, quickly 

emerged as a testament to the possibilities 

of dialogue and friendship, 

countering narratives of an inevitable 

“clash of civilizations” between Christianity 

and Islam. 

In the wake of the trip, the Muslim-dominated 

government of Iraq 

declared March 6 a national “Day 

of Tolerance and Co-Existence,” to 

commemorate the meeting between 

the pope and the ayatollah. 

It remains to be seen whether fallout 

from the papal visit will fundamentally 

alter the usually grim calculus in 

Iraq, but simply as a display of personal 

bravado and pastoral determination, 

Pope Francis’s brief trip to Iraq was a 

remarkable moment – and, therefore, 

also the top Vatican story of the year. 

John L. Allen Jr. is the editor of Crux. 



An agenda of welcome 

Predicting the long-term impact of Pope Francis’ 

visit to Cyprus and Greece. 

Pope Francis and Orthodox Archbishop Chrysostomos 

II of Cyprus attend a meeting with the 

Orthodox bishops who are members of the Holy 

Synod at the Orthodox cathedral in Nicosia, 

Cyprus, on Dec. 3. | CNS /PAUL HARING 

BY ELISE ANN ALLEN 

ROME — Two big items topped 

Pope Francis’ agenda during his 

visit to Cyprus and Greece earlier 

this month: advancing relations with 

the Orthodox churches and sending a 

clear message to Europe on this issue 

of migration. 

The pontiff didn’t hesitate to wade 

into the tricky politics of both issues, 

as well as other equally fraught ones, 

including the mistreatment of Catholic 

minorities and the fight against climate 

change. 

Orthodox 

While in Cyprus Dec. 2-4, Pope 

Francis issued a forceful “mea culpa” 

for the “centuries of division and 

separation” between the Catholic and 

Orthodox, acknowledging the damage 

done by “preconceptions often based 

on scarce and distorted information, 

and spread by an aggressive and polemical 

literature” since the Great Schism 

of 1054. 

Pope Francis proposed works of charity 

as a means to help heal relations between 

the Catholic West and Orthodox 

East, saying that education and efforts 

to promote human dignity can help 

the two communities “rediscover our 

fraternity, and communion will mature 

by itself, to the praise of God.” 

While in Cyprus relations between 

Catholics and Orthodox are fairly 

smooth, that is not the case in Greece, 

where tensions are still palpable, and 

Catholics are often treated with prejudice. 

Many of Greece’s Orthodox still 

hold the Vatican responsible for perceived 

mistreatment of their community, 

from the sacking of Constantinople 

in 1204 to the bombing of Serbia in 

1999. The tensions were on full display 

in 2001, when St. Pope John Paul II’s 

visit to Greece was preceded by Orthodox 

protests and even prayer vigils in a 

bid to prevent it. 

While things have greatly improved 

since then, two decades later, there are 

still problems to work through. Those 


were on full display when, upon his 

arrival to the Orthodox archbishopric 

in Athens, an Orthodox priest heckled 

Prop Francis, shouting, “Pope, you are 

a heretic!” 

In Greece, Pope Francis again 

lamented the divisions between 

Catholics and Orthodox, and notably 

apologized for the Catholic Church’s 

own mistakes along the way, saying 

Catholics had carried out “actions and 

decisions that had little or nothing to 

do with Jesus and the Gospel, but were 

instead marked by a thirst for advantage 

and power, gravely weakened our 

communion.” 

Migrants 

Immigration was front and center 

before the trip even began, when the 

Cypriot government announced days 

ahead of Pope Francis’ departure that 

the Vatican was helping to relocate 

around 50 migrants there to Rome. 

At an ecumenical prayer service with 

migrants and refugees in Nicosia, the 

pope made a passionate appeal on 

behalf of migrants and the perils they 

often face in their journey. 

Migrants often face unspeakable 

crimes along the way, he said at the 

meeting, noting that, “Women are 

sold, men are tortured and enslaved.” 

This often happened, he said, after 

“they were pushed back” by so-called 

“civilized society” in the West. 

“Looking at you all, I see the suffering 

of the journey, so many who have been 

kidnapped, sold, exploited,” he told the 

migrants, saying, “We lament when we 

hear about the [crimes under the Nazis 

and Stalin] How could it happen? 

Brothers and sisters, it is happening 

today! On shores nearby!” 

Once in Greece, he traveled to the 

island of Lesbos on Dec. 5 (his second 

trip there since becoming pope) and 

visited the island’s main Reception and 

Identification Center. Today the camp, 

which replaced the overcrowded Moria 

camp that burned down in September 

2020, is currently home to some 2,200 

people. 

He toured the camp’s prefabricated 

containers, heard testimonies from 

their inhabitants, and used his remarks 

to chastise governments for their 

inaction on the migrant crisis and for 

creating procedural hurdles that make 

it nearly impossible for many asylum 

requests to be approved. 

While the global community has 

worked together to roll out COVID-19 

vaccines to address climate change, he 

said that “all this seems to be terribly 

absent when it comes to migration.” 

“Human lives, real people, are at 

stake!” he said. “When we reject the 

poor, we reject peace. History teaches 

us that narrow self-interest and nationalism 

lead to disastrous consequences,” 

he said. 

What is needed, the pope said, “are 

not unilateral actions but wide-ranging 

policies. … Let us stop ignoring reality, 

stop constantly shifting responsibility, 

stop passing off the issue of migration 

to others, as if it mattered to no one 

and was only a pointless burden to be 

shouldered by somebody else!” 

Pope Francis did thank both Greece 

and Cyprus for their welcome of 

migrants and refugees, as the Mediterranean 

nations have long borne the 

brunt of Europe’s migration crisis. 

What’s next? 

In the aftermath of the papal visit, 

it’s worth asking what might come 

about from these gestures and shows of 

advocacy. 

As far as the Orthodox are concerned, 

regular meetings between leaders will 

at very least help to maintain and keep 

relations cordial, even if there are still 

wrinkles to iron out. 

Pope Francis’ apology to Hieronymus 

II in Greece went a long way in the 

effort to patch tensions in Greece, and 

can be likened to a down payment on 

what he hopes will be an increasing 

thawing of relations between Catholics 

and Orthodox going forward. 

The migrant issue, however, will 

likely be a tougher sell given the 

political implications and the polemics 

surrounding the problem. 

Both Cyprus and Greece have taken 

recent steps to slow, if not stop altogether, 

the number of new arrivals 

either through stricter legislation, an 

increase in so-called “pushbacks” of 

migrant-laden boats attempting to 

dock on their shores, and a rise in the 

number of deportations to Turkey for 

those whose asylum requests have been 

denied. 

Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou 

praised the pope as a “protector 

of the poor and persecuted” during 

his visit to Lesbos, saying in her brief 

remarks that the migration problem 

was the responsibility of all of Europe. 

If and how this will translate into 

future policy is yet to be seen, but 

with Sakellaropoulou calling the rest 

of Europe to 

Pope Francis greets 

children as he visits with 

refugees at the government-run 

Reception and 

Identification Center in 

Mytilene, Greece, on Dec. 

5. | CNS/VATICAN MEDIA 

do its part and 

with many EU 

member states 

digging in their 

heels when it 

comes to accepting 

a share 

of new arrivals, 

the pope has his 

work cut out for 

him in getting everyone on board with 

his agenda of welcome. 

Elise Ann Allen is a senior correspondent 

for Crux in Rome, covering the 

Vatican and the global Church. 


A saint for 

our ‘long 

loneliness’ 

Dorothy Day’s cause 

for canonization has 

been sent to Rome. 

Here’s what her 

complicated life can 

teach us. 

BY KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ 

Eighty-nine years to the day after 

Servant of God Dorothy Day 

asked God to reveal his will for 

her service to him and those who struggle 

the most, the Archdiocese of New 

York capped an in-depth investigation 

of her life and holiness with a special 

Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. 

The fateful day in 1932, as it happens, 

fell on the feast of the Immaculate 

Conception and found Day praying in 

the national basilica of the same name 

in Washington, D.C. 

“Folks, you’re witnessing history,” 

the archbishop of New York, Cardinal 

Timothy Dolan, told those attending 

the Dec. 8 liturgy, where the materials 

produced by the investigation were 

physically blessed before being sent to 

Rome. 

History, yes. But what rang clear to 

me, sitting in the pews of St. Patrick’s, 

is that Day, the social activist who 

co-founded The Catholic Worker 

newspaper and movement with Peter 

Maurin, can be a transformational 

figure in the Church today — if we let 

her. 

There’s a false divide in the Church 

between people who prioritize what is 

typically associated with “social justice” 

— caring for the poor, the immigrant, 

the marginalized, the environment, the 

prisoner — and pro-life issues, chiefly 

abortion, but also assisted suicide, and 

all other threats to human life. 

But figures like Dorothy Day show 

us that we can love them all, while 

still having our own individual calls to 

whom we specialize in helping. For 

Day, that was whoever happened to be 

in front of her. 

We don’t yet know if she will be canonized. 

The end of the archdiocesan 

investigation now puts her cause for 

sainthood in the hands of the Congregation 

for the Causes of the Saints 

in Rome, which will review the local 

findings and further examine her life, 

A still from “Revolution of the 

Heart: The Dorothy Day Story,” 

a film by Martin Doblmeier. 

| CNS COURTESY JOURNEY FILMS 

including for possible miracles that can 

be attributed to her intercession. 

One of the things I’ve found about 

Day is that political differences 

sometimes get in the way of loving and 

understanding her. But I like to think 

back to a memorable line that Archbishop 

José H. Gomez said about her 

a few years ago: “I don’t know if she’s a 

saint, but I know she makes me want to 

be one.” 

Her writings, including her autobiography, 

“The Long Loneliness,” are 

remarkable for their resonance, maybe 

in a particular way to the lives of women 

suffering the painful consequences 

wrought by the Sexual Revolution. 

Before her conversion, Day had an 

abortion. She wasn’t promiscuous; she 

thought she was in love with the father 


of her daughter, Tamar, a man who 

would not marry her. Human life and 

love are complicated, and her endurance 

and trust in God and his mercy 

makes her a tremendous witness — 

and intercessor — for women and men 

carrying the wounds of the culture we 

live in. 

But in her work and writings, Day 

also seemed to foresee the consequences 

of the epochal change sparked by an 

ongoing pandemic. 

Explaining the heart of the Catholic 

Worker, Day wrote in her autobiography 

“The Long Loneliness,” “We 

cannot love God unless we love each 

other, and to love we must know each 

other. We know him in the breaking 

of bread, and we know each other in 

the breaking of bread, and we are not 

alone any more. Heaven is a banquet 

and life is a banquet, too, even with a 

crust, where there is companionship.” 

To those suffering from fear and isolation 

in a time marked by disease and 

death, she gives us this: “We have all 

known the long loneliness and we have 

learned that the only solution is love 

and that love comes with community.” 

I recalled those lines noticing the social 

distancing stickers that remain on 

the main aisle of St. Patrick’s. I think 

Day would have had mixed feelings 

about them. Surely, she would have 

wanted us to look out for and protect 

one another. But I can’t help but 

wonder what she would have thought 

about the term “social distancing” and 

its implications. 

If there’s anything that Day — and 

New York Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan imparts the final blessing during a Mass marking the conclusion of the Archdiocese 

of New York’s investigation of Dorothy Day’s candidacy for sainthood on Dec. 8 at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 

New York City. | GREGORY A. SHEMITZ/CNS 

the COVID-19 pandemic — have 

taught us, is that the last thing the 

human heart needs is more isolation 

from others. God did not make us to be 

alone in the world, nor does he leave 

us alone in it. It takes the presence of a 

community to help us realize this, the 

greatest reality of our lives. 

One of the remarkable things about 

the Mass was that it coincided with 

the cathedral’s monthly Mass for 

young adults. So, gathered that night 

for eucharistic adoration, confession, 

and Mass were the young adults of 

the archdiocese, joined by family and 

friends of the Dorothy Day Guild. Her 

granddaughter, Martha Hennessey, was 

one of the readers, the eulogist at her 

funeral Mass, and was among the gift 

bearers. Again: Dorothy Day unites, if 

we let her! 

Day is widely quoted as having said, 

“Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to 

be dismissed that easily.” Fortunately 

for those involved in her canonization 

cause, I think it’s safe to assume she 

was speaking in terms of her life on 

earth. 

But it’s also good news for us. I often 

hear this attributed to foster parents: 

“They are such saints,” which essentially 

translates to “I could never do such 

a thing.” Well, odds are, they could 

never do such a thing either, not without 

essential things like a community 

of fellowship, mentoring, and practical 

resources. The difference between 

them and the declarer is likely a simple 

fiat — a trusting yes! 

Dorothy Day’s life of conversation 

was just that. She took people who felt 

orphaned, whether because of mental 

illness or a host of other reasons. In 

constantly going to Jesus for strength, 

Day is a model for how to live in a 

world full of dangerous distractions. It 

can be done. It must be done. 

We are all called to be saints. Which 

is why I don’t think she would mind 

being among them now in eternity — 

and acknowledged on earth — because 

it helps show the Christian way. 

Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at 

the National Review Institute, editor-at-large 

of National Review magazine, 

and the author of “A Year with the 

Mystics: Visionary Wisdom for Daily 

Living” (Tan Books, $44.95). 


WITH GRACE 

DR. GRAZIE POZO CHRISTIE 

An ode to God’s creativity 

A scene from the movie “Encanto.” | DISNEY VIA CNS 

Earlier this month, we screwed 

up our courage and took 

our youngest children to see 

the new Disney movie “Encanto” 

(“Charm” or “Enchantment” in Spanish). 

I use the word “courage” because 

watching a children’s movie these days 

can be an act of bravery. 

Too often, we’ve felt a terrible disappointment 

when a movie that ought 

to speak to us of clean, childlike joys 

turns out to be just another vehicle 

for the advancement of whatever the 

latest, not-so-clean social fad might be. 

I’m happy to report that “Encanto” is, 

in fact, enchanting. 

Yes, my family is naturally inclined 

to enjoy the film’s rhythms of bachata, 

salsa, and merengue strained through 

the fine artistry of Lin Manuel Miranda, 

who composed much of the score. 

But the movie is much more than 

visually and aurally compelling — it 

is a paean to the indispensable virtues 

found in every happy family: unity, 

self-sacrifice, and the cheerfulness of 

self-forgetfulness even amid difficulties. 

Notably, with a cast of characters 

of every race, “Encanto,” which is set 

in Colombia, does not fall into the 

ugly politics of identity that colors 

so much of our culture. Instead, it is 

quite consciously colorblind. 

Without giving too much away, “Encanto” 

is about an extended family — 

“la Familia Madrigal” (“the Madrigal 

Family”) — led by a strong and noble 

woman, the classic “abuela” (“grandma”) 

of Hispanic lore. Widowed long 

ago by an act of political violence and 

left to forge a new life with her triplet 

babies, she is granted a miracle: an enchanted 

house in a magically secluded 

and protected corner of Colombia. 

Her family grows through marriages 

26 • ANGELUS • December 31, 2021

Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie is a mother of five 

who practices radiology in the Miami area. 

EY VIA CNS 

and the birth of children, tightly knit 

and with each member endowed with 

a supernatural ability. One aunt can 

hear everything with perfect clarity, another 

makes food that cures ailments, 

and a third has superhuman strength. 

One uncle can predict the future, 

which becomes a source of woe. 

But for the most part, they use their 

gifts only for the good of the villagers 

in their protected valley. The magical 

house and the happy family that dwell 

in it are the mainstay of the whole 

community, including the good priest 

who has not been left out of the colorful 

narrative. 

The drama centers around one Madrigal 

girl whose special power has not 

arrived when expected, and her desire 

to nevertheless serve as the rest of the 

family does. As in so many Disney 

classics, here we have a girl trembling 

on the threshold of womanhood, eager 

to pull back the veil on the mystery of 

her own life. 

However, unlike the characters in 

those films, she is not trying to find her 

individual path while flying in the face 

of family expectations. She is feeling 

for the best way to do her duty, which, 

for a Madrigal, is the duty to protect 

the villagers and preserve her family’s 

unity. What a breath of clean fresh air! 

In this and other ways “Encanto” 

sang pure music to our hearts. 

The enchanted house itself, we decided 

on the way home, is a symbol of 

the way a loving home is a child’s magical 

refuge in a hard world that is too 

often experienced as traumatic. That 

is the way, for instance, that I experienced 

my own stable and affectionate 

home, growing up while moving from 

place to place in the years after my 

parents’ exile from Cuba: Give a glad 

home-refuge to a child, and the storms 

that blow outside that sturdy structure 

can be survived and forgotten. 

The film’s ode to transgenerational 

living also resonated with us. We 

recognized the delight of the rapid-fire 

collisions of heart with heart 

in a family life that nests each person 

in a multitude of relationships, where 

loneliness is difficult to imagine. 

“Encanto” shows, in beautiful color 

and song, the loveliness of connectedness 

and mutual support in which 

freedom, when it comes, is not the 

individualist’s sterile liberty to pursue 

one’s own passions, but the freedom to 

run toward the good of others with an 

energetic bound. 

Adding to all this charm is the pretty 

diversity of the characters. As in our 

own Hispanic families, here is a group 

of people representing in the color of 

their skin, the curl of their hair, and 

the shapes of their noses the long genetic 

strands that tie us to our forefathers 

from different parts of the world. 

It is lovely to see the racial blends 

presented as we ourselves experience 

them: delightful variations in the endless 

creativity of God who makes each 

of his sons and daughters uniquely 

and out of love and one by one. The 

idea of separating people into opposing 

groups — often on purpose to 

stoke grievances that are then used to 

advance some political cause or another 

— is a foreign one in the world 

of “Encanto.” 

I don’t know if Disney made a 

conscious decision with this film to 

return to a less ferociously polarized 

time, when individualism wasn’t 

exalted over the relationships that 

nourish us, when freedom was a gift to 

be won and used for noble purposes, 

when differences in skin tone were 

less than skin deep. If there was such 

a decision, Disney deserves congratulations. 

If it was a matter of chance 

I would say there is no such thing: 

Only the spirit of truth and goodness 

making his colors shine and his songs 

resound. 


NOW PLAYING WEST SIDE STORY 

A MUSICAL FOR A 

DIFFERENT AMERICA? 

The world’s most famous director gets tripped up trying 

to retell ‘West Side Story’ to a modern audience. 

A scene from Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story.” 

| 20TH CENTURY FOX 

BY HANNAH LONG 

Steven Spielberg, populist bard 

of America’s childhood, grew 

up adoring “West Side Story.” 

He fondly recalls getting into trouble 

for singing the vulgar parts of the 

Leonard-Bernstein-penned, Stephen 

Sondheim-lyricized score around the 

dinner table. 

Unfortunately, while he may know 

the words by heart, Spielberg has 

forgotten, in this adaptation, to include 

the sort of things that draw children to 

movies in the first place: joy, humor, 

freshness. 

The new film is self-serious, expensive, 

and nostalgic — all the qualities 

that have weighed down the second 

half of Spielberg’s career. Laser-focused 

on accuracy and representation, the 

movie accidentally ends up endorsing 

the sort of divisiveness that leads to its 

central tragedy. 

“West Side Story” is Romeo and Juliet 

reimagined as a tale of competing 

gangs in 1950s New York City. The 

Puerto Rican “Sharks” and white “Jets” 

are constantly skirmishing over territory 

in the San Juan Hill neighborhood. 

They absolutely oppose any sort of mixing 

— in friendship or marriage. The 

protagonists are star-crossed lovebirds 

— Maria and Tony — Puerto Rican 

and Polish, respectively. 

Maria is a wide-eyed innocent, played 

here by newcomer Rachel Zigler. 

Ansel Elgort is Tony, a hunky but som- 

nambulant leading man whose lack 

of charm and passion drags the story 

down every time he’s on screen. In 

some lights he favors a young broody 

Harrison Ford, but without any of the 

danger. 

Happily, the supporting cast is far 

more colorful. Mike Faist is electric 

as Riff, the edgy and vindictive leader 

of the Jets. He probably gives the most 

complicated performance — radiating 

vulnerability and false bravado. And 

Ariana DuBose is incredibly charismatic 

as Anita, rivaling Rita Morena’s 

original take on the character. 

It’s clear Spielberg has poured a lot of 

heart and care into this adaptation. He 

glories in sweeping outdoor sequences 


and long views down the CGI-aged 

skyscraper canyons of the west side. 

He gives us a film full of detail. While 

there were plenty of exteriors in the 

original film, it also leaned heavily into 

abstract setbound scenes with lights 

down low and lights twinkling in the 

darkness. You had to paint in the exterior 

world in your head. 

With the exception of one rather 

wonderful moment (singing “Maria,” 

Tony stands surrounded by the 

reflected glow of puddles, stepping 

out of realism into the world of fantasy 

and romance), Spielberg’s film is far 

less willing to leave things up to the 

imagination, both in the staging and 

the script. 

One manifestation of this is a modern 

tendency to offer pat psychoanalytical 

motivations for characters’ behavior. 

The Jets, the movie explains, are the 

result of fatherlessness. That’s it. That’s 

why they’re bad. Tony is seeking to 

reform because he did a stint in prison 

for nearly killing a man. He regrets 

this, you see, so he’s trying to change. 

In his New Yorker review, Richard 

Brody points out that Spielberg “delivers 

the very kinds of diagnoses that the 

song [‘Gee, Officer Krupke’] is meant 

to mock.” By locking characters into 

one simple backstory, the film makes 

them narrower, one-note sociological 

concepts wandering through the grim 

plot. 

In an effort to correct the lack of 

Latino representation in the original 

film, the remake goes hard in the 

other direction, again working to “fix” 

things instead of considering what is 

necessary. Some of that is good — 

we get a cast made up of wonderful 

Latino performers. But other parts 

are needlessly confusing and divisive. 

English dialogue is interspersed with 

unsubtitled filler phrases in Spanish. 

This took me out of the film as I tried 

to dredge up the high school memories 

to translate it. 

The worst fallout of this focus on 

identity is that it muddies the central 

moral of the story. When Anita 

narrowly escapes assault by the Jets, she 

proudly declares in Spanish that she is 

not American, but Puerto Rican. The 

music swells and light blazes from the 

window behind her. 

Such a triumphalist spin on Anita’s 

alienation from the “America” she 

praised earlier in the film profoundly 

misses the point of both the musical 

and the source play. It’s a tragedy that 

Anita would declare herself Puerto 

Rican, not a great clapback moment. 

In the original film, the strains of 

“America” play queasily underneath 

the attack, drawing our attention to 

the terrible contrast between what she 

wanted America to be and what it was. 

“The divisions between the Sharks 

and the Jets in 1957, which inspired 

the musical, were profound,” Spielberg 

said in an interview with Yahoo. “But 

not as divided as we find ourselves 

today.” 

As well-meaning as such a statement 

is, it’s also ridiculous. It’s as if the 

director is determined to be morose, 

insisting we see the past as a bad time 

that isn’t even past. But as imperfect 

as things are now, a recent Gallup poll 

shows U.S. approval for interracial marriage 

had risen from 4% in 1958 to an 

all-time high of 94% in 2021. Change 

happened; it is possible. 

But like its director, the new “West 

Side Story” is bereft of hope that things 

could ever be otherwise than as they 

are. A key to the tragedy of the 1961 

film was that it felt plausible that one 

could escape the cocksure posturing 

and proud vengeful cycles of the gangs. 

It felt like a tossup, 

anyway. Here, 

Ansel Elgort and Rachel 

Zegler in “West 

Side Story.” | 20TH 

CENTURY FOX 

instead of the lovers 

getting the great 

optimistic anthem, 

which goes, 

“There’s a place for 

us / somewhere a 

place for us,” these 

words are sung quietly, sadly, by a 

regretful old woman. 

The latest “West Side Story” is not 

terrible. There are some nice moments 

in the film — particularly any time 

Mike Faist and Ariana DeBose get to 

dance. It has Spielberg’s characteristic 

attention to detail and to crafting 

beautiful, elegant images. But it feels 

more like a period piece infused with 

modern angst, instead of an old classic 

bursting with fresh energy. 

Hannah Long is an assistant editor 

at HarperCollins and an Appalachian 

writer based in New York City. 


DESIRE LINES 

HEATHER KING 

The cure 

to our 

accusation 

addiction 

SHUTTERSTOCK 

One effect of social media is that 

the world seems increasingly 

to resemble a giant courtroom 

with the combatants shrieking at one 

another, “J’accuse!” I accuse, I accuse, 

I accuse. 

“J’accuse!” was of course the opening 

salvo in an open letter by Émile Zola 

to the president of the French Republic, 

of what came to be known as the 

Dreyfus affair. Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish 

officer, had been accused of treason by 

the French army. 

Nowadays, colleagues spy on co-workers, 

friends rat out friends, political 

leaders at the highest level bully, namecall, 

insinuate, gossip, and slander. 

News is so biased, depending on the 

outlet’s audience, that we hardly dare 

hope for anything remotely approaching 

the objective truth. Egregiously 

substandard behavior is foisted off as 

the fault of deranged “libs,” some form 

of “identity discrimination,” or the 

egregiously substandard behavior of 

one’s enemies. “You can’t accuse me! I 

accuse you!” 

No communal, artistic, spiritual, or 

human venture is exempt from this 

curdled vision. Thanksgiving: an oppressor’s 

holiday. Marriage: indentured 

servanthood. Children: a monstrous 

burden. Henry David Thoreau’s cabin: 

tainted because, as a recent Washington 

Post article explained, “until very 

recently, there has been little acknowledgment 

that Walden Woods was first 

occupied by Black people whose experience 

of self-sufficiency was harrowingly 

different from Thoreau’s two-year 

experiment.” 

It’s as if the secular culture, with 

neither God nor theology, has come 

up on its own with a twisted notion of 

the Fall whereby half of humanity is 

by its nature violent, greedy, hateful, 

and irredeemable; and the other half 

is by its nature sinless, pure, gentle, 

and blameless, and therefore needs no 

redeeming. 

A quick review of a few “Best Books 

of 2021” lists reveals that a good 75% 

of them — nonfiction, fiction, poetry 

— are based on a variation of this 


Heather King is an award-winning 

author, speaker, and workshop leader. 

oppressor-victim paradigm. Everything 

must be unmasked. Everyone must be 

exposed. 

No accident, of course, that one name 

for Satan is The Accuser. 

People are fawned over, championed, 

and supported as long as they’re on the 

correct side of the ideological divide, 

whether that happens to be right or left. 

But no one is loved. No one is admired. 

This adversarial stance has obviously 

bled into the Church. Rads, trads, 

pope-haters. People who refuse to 

attend Mass because they can’t receive 

on the tongue during a pandemic. People 

who refuse to attend Mass because 

they can’t bear “the hypocrisy.” 

How different all this is from the 

approach to our brothers and sisters 

actually modeled by Christ. 

because we’re not worthy of notice — 

and nor do we hide our light under a 

bushel — but because to insist upon 

being first leads to a life of bitterness, 

frustration, and self-pity. 

What are we trying to evangelize 

people to if not this astonishing good 

news: that if you want your joy to be 

complete, be strict with yourself and 

easy on everyone else. Develop a sense 

of humor. Start letting people off the 

hook. 

Yield the limelight. Let someone else 

sit up front. 

As Abbé Henri Huvelin, a 19th-century 

mystic and theologian, noted: 

“Christ took the last place so completely 

that no one has ever been able to 

snatch it from him.” 

Gazing at the monstrance during a 

recent Holy Hour, I thought of a God 

If you want your joy to be complete, be strict with 

yourself and easy on everyone else. 

We followers of Christ don’t tear people 

down; we build people up. In “The 

Dream of a Ridiculous Man,” Fyodor 

Dostoevsky imagines paradise as a 

place that couldn’t be further removed 

from the hell we have made of our 

public spaces: 

“They sang the praises of nature, 

of the sea, of the woods. They liked 

making songs about one another, 

and praised each other like children; 

they were the simplest songs, but they 

sprang from their hearts and went to 

one’s heart. And not only in their songs 

but in all their lives they seemed to do 

nothing but admire one another.” 

We followers of Christ pray the “Litany 

of Humility”: “That others may be 

praised and I unnoticed. That others 

may be chosen and I set aside. That 

others become holier than I, provided 

I become as holy as I should.” Not 

so humble that entered into history and 

time in the form of a baby who could 

not yet even speak. 

I thought of a God who came into the 

world to a people under siege, to an 

illiterate mother so poor that she gave 

birth in a barn. 

I thought of the Holy Family, the 

shepherds and oxen and asses, bathed 

in unearthly light, all gathered in wonder 

and exultation round the manger. 

I thought of every Catholic altar in 

the world draped this month in royal 

purple, and of the Wise Men bearing 

their gold, frankincense, and myrrh, 

following the star in the East in order 

to fall on their knees and worship 

before what the world to this day sees as 

this tiny nobody of a King. 

The follower of Christ doesn’t accuse 

(except himself). The follower of Christ 

adores. 

December 31, 2021 • ANGELUS • 31 

December 31, 2021 • ANGELUS • 31

LETTER AND SPIRIT 

SCOTT HAHN 

Scott Hahn is founder of the 

St. Paul Center for Biblical 

Theology; stpaulcenter.com. 

An angel’s starring role 

As far back as the fourth century, St. John Chrysostom 

pointed out that the Star of Bethlehem didn’t behave 

like any other star anyone had ever seen. Most stars, 

he said, appear to move from east to west, like the sun; but 

this star “wafted from north to south; for so is Palestine 

situated with respect to Persia.” 

It appeared, moreover, burning bright at midday, St. 

Chrysostom added, “and this is not within the power of a 

star, nor even of the moon.” 

Finally, as the Magi approached their goal, the star descended 

from heaven and hovered above the Holy Family’s 

temporary home. 

“This star,” said St. Chrysostom, “was not of the common 

sort, or rather not a star at all, it seems to me, but some 

invisible power transformed into this appearance.” 

Throughout the Bible, the stars in the sky are identified 

with angels in heaven (see, for example, Job 38:7, Revelation 

1:20, 12:4). The motif appears in the Bible, and in other 

Jewish sources from the time of Jesus. The philosopher 

Philo of Alexandria speculated that the stars “are living 

creatures, but of a kind composed entirely of mind.” 

Brilliant scientists have spent years combing through 

ancient chronicles, reconciling calendars, and working 

out the equations — all so that they could identify the Star 

of Bethlehem with a known astronomical phenomenon: 

Halley’s Comet, for example, or some once-in-centuries 

conjunction of planets. Their arguments are ingenious; but 

I’m not persuaded. 

St. Chrysostom may have been pre-scientific and pre-critical 

in his thinking; but he wasn’t stupid. He knew that 

stars don’t do what the Star of Bethlehem was said to do. 

I’m inclined to agree with him that this was yet another appearance 

of a Christmas angel. In the beginning, God had 

created the heavens and the earth; and all the angels were 

caught up in the cosmic drama. Now all find themselves, 

once again, caught up in its climax. 

With John, I have to conclude that 

an angel appeared to the Magi as 

Mosaic mural depicting light and led them to true worship 

the Nativity, by Manuel — which, as I’ve said before, is what 

Perez Paredes, in the angels were created to do. 

Nuestro Señor del Veneno 

Temple on Carranza ed the angelic interpretation. He 

St. Pope Gregory the Great accept- 

Street in Mexico City. observed, too, the great difference 

| WIKIMEDIA COMMONS 

between the way God dealt with the 

shepherds and the way he dealt with 

the Magi. 

The shepherds, even though they were the lowliest of uneducated 

Jews, were still members of the Chosen People, 

who had heard the proclamation of the truth all their lives. 

To them God sent angels undisguised, as it were, and the 

angels spoke to them in plain language. “But a sign and 

not a voice guided the gentiles,” St. Gregory explained. 

“For they were not prepared to make full use of reason to 

know the Lord.” 

To understand the meaning of Christmas, the simplest 

of pious field hands were better equipped than the most 

erudite of scholars. 

What brought the Magi to the crib in Bethlehem, however, 

was their ardent disposition to know the truth. That’s 

something the angels could see — and work with. 


■ SATURDAY, DECEMBER 25 

Music at St. Cyril’s: Midnight Mass. St. Cyril of 

Jerusalem, 15520 Ventura Blvd., Encino, 12 a.m. The 

renowned choir and orchestra of St. Cyril of Jerusalem 

will present “Missa sexti toni” by Johann Ernst Eberlin 

for Midnight Mass and again at 12 p.m. on Christmas 

Day. Other music will include the “Ave Maria” by Franz 

Biebl, “Cantique de Noel” by Adolphe Adam, “Now Is 

Born” arranged by Roger Wagner, and “Noel, Noel, Bells 

Are Ringing” by Wilbur Chenoweth. Gregorian chant 

antiphons will be presented for Introit and Communion. 

Music at St. Cyril’s is under the direction of William C. 

Beck, who will accompany voices and orchestra on the 

Rosales Opus 23 organ. 

Free Christmas Day Meal Distribution. St. Agatha 

Church, 2646 S. Mansfield Ave., Los Angeles, 1-3 p.m. 

For more information, email celeste.chretien4685@ 

gmail.com. 

■ THURSDAY, DECEMBER 30 

New Year’s Retreat: Restoring Faith in the Human 

Race. Holy Spirit Retreat Center, 4316 Lanai Rd., Encino. 

With Sister Chris Machado and Michael O’Palco. 

Retreat runs Dec. 30-Jan. 1. For more information, visit 

www.hsrcenter.com or call 818-784-4515. 

■ SATURDAY, JANUARY 8 

Living a Hope-Filled Life. St. Finbar Church parish hall, 

2010 W. Olive Ave., Burbank, 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m. A day 

of teaching, prayer, and Mass with Father Bill Delaney, 

SJ, and Kay Murdy. Topics include “Rejoice in the Lord 

Always” and “The God of Peace Will Be With You.” Cost: 

$25/person if registered by Dec. 31, $35/afterward. For 

more information, visit events.scrc.org. 

Centering Prayer Introductory Workshop. Holy Spirit 

Retreat Center, 4316 Lanai Rd., Encino, 9 a.m.-12:30 

p.m. With Bobbi Rudin, Marilyn Nobori and the Contemplative 

Outreach Team. For more information, visit 

hsrcenter.com or call 818-784-4515. 

■ FRIDAY, JANUARY 14 

Hildegard of Bingen’s “Book of Divine Works” Weekend 

Retreat. Holy Spirit Retreat Center, 4316 Lanai Rd., 

Encino. Friday, 5:30 p.m.-Sunday, 1 p.m. With Father 

Stephen Coffey, OSB, Cam. For more information, visit 



Cultural Mysticism: A Theology of Pop Culture. 

Zoom webinar, 9 a.m.-12 p.m. Presenter: Sister Nancy 

Usselmann, director of the Pauline Center for Media 

Studies. What does it mean to be a mystic today? How 

can our media experience provide the opportunity for us 

to recognize God’s grace at work in the world and in our 

lives? Cost: $10/person. To register, visit https://lacatholics.org/departments-ministries/religious-education/. 

Compelled by Love: A Jubilee Retreat. St. Joseph the 

Worker Church, 19808 Cantlay St., Winnetka, 9 a.m.-12 

p.m. Come renew your discipleship of Jesus and hear 

his summons to join him on mission. Presenters: Ana 

De Anda, Eddie Perez, Father Parker Sandoval, Katie 

Tassinari, Bobby Vidal. Free event. For more information, 

email Alicia Hernandez at ahernandez@la-archdiocese. 

org or call 213-637-7542. 

New Year Silent Saturday, Centering Prayer, and 

Silence. Holy Spirit Retreat Center, 4316 Lanai Rd., 

Encino, 9 a.m.-12 p.m. With Marilyn Nobori and the 

Contemplative Outreach Team. For more information, visit 


■ SUNDAY, JANUARY 16 

Diaconate Virtual Information Day. Zoom, 2 p.m. The 

Diaconate Formation Office invites all interested in joining 

the diaconate program to learn more. Send your name, parish, 

and pastor’s name to Deacon Melecio Zamora at dmz2011@ 

la-archdiocese.org. Presentations will be in English and Spanish. 

“Gifted to Give” Santo Niño Celebration. Cathedral of Our 

Lady of the Angels, 555 W. Temple St., Los Angeles, 3:30 p.m. 

Archbishop José H. Gomez will celebrate a Mass in honor of 

500 years of Philippine Christianity and the 35th anniversary 

of the feast of Santo Niño. Dinner banquet will follow at Casa 

Italiano, 1051 N. Broadway, Los Angeles, 6:30 p.m. Archbishop 

Gomez will give an address. For more information, 

call Romy Esturas at 213-393-9405 or email romyesturas@ 

hotmail.com, or call Lem Amit at 323-793-5144 or email 

lemamit@aol.com. 

■ MONDAY, JANUARY 17 

Limitless. Four-week small-group experience that explores the 

cost and abundance of the life Jesus offers by his invitation to 

follow him. For more details and free registration, visit https:// 

lacatholics.org/departments-ministries/new-evangelization-and-parish-life/. 


OneLife LA. The event begins at La Placita with a pre-program 

including a welcome from Archbishop José H. Gomez, who 

will lead the walk through downtown streets to Los Angeles 

State Historic Park for inspiring speaker presentations and a 

musical program. For more information, visit onelifela.org/. 

Conscious Aging, Death Makes Life Possible, Surrender & 

Letting Go. Holy Spirit Retreat Center, 4316 Lanai Rd., Encino, 

9:30 a.m.-3 p.m. With Deborah Lorentz, SSS. For more information, 

visit hsrcenter.com or call 818-784-4515. 


Angels: The Good and the Bad. St. John the Baptist Church 

parish hall, 3883 Baldwin Park Blvd., Baldwin Park, 10 

a.m.-4:30 p.m. A day of teaching with Dominic Berardino 

and Father Ismael Robles. Topics include “How to Solicit the 

Ministrations of God’s Holy Angels” and “Discernment and 

Testing Spirits: What You Need to Know.” Cost: $25/person 

if registered by Jan. 24, $35 afterward. For more information, 

email spirit@scrc.org. 

■ SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 5 

8th Annual Nun Run. 106 W. Janss Rd., Thousand Oaks, 8 

a.m. Join the Sisters of Notre Dame and La Reina High School 

and Middle School for the 8th annual Nun Run. Proceeds 

benefit the charitable outreach of the Sisters of Notre Dame 

in California and around the world. Event features a 5K, 1-mile 

run, and community service fair. For more information, visit 

www.nun.run. 

“Divine Mercy & the Family in this Challenging Time” 

Retreat. Christ Cathedral Campus, 13280 Chapman Ave., 

Garden Grove, 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Check-in starts at 7 a.m., Mass at 

8:30 a.m. Featured speakers are Father Robert Spitzer, SJ, Ph.D, 

Father Quan Tran, Donna Lee, and Angel and Estrella Mijares. 

Cost: $25/person, brown-bag lunch included, due by Jan. 5. 

Checks should be made payable to Holy Name of Mary and 

mailed to Divine Mercy Ministry, 321 Vallejo St., La Habra, 

CA, 90631. Call Estrella Mijares at 562-972-5675 or email 

angelstar73@earthlink.net. 

Items for the calendar of events are due four weeks prior to the date of the event. They may be emailed to calendar@angelusnews.com. 

All calendar items must include the name, date, time, address of the event, and a phone number for additional information.

Angelus News | December 31, 2021 | Vol. 6 No. 26

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Angelus News | December 31, 2021 | Vol. 6 No. 26

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